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Constitutional Amendment

Senator Sherrod Brown, in this morning's debate over the DISCLOSE Act, noted an article in today's Columbus Dispatch demonstrating the great need for this law:

Before a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in January, the most Cincinnati billionaire Carl Lindner could directly contribute to Senate candidate Rob Portman was $4,800.

But because of a decision opening campaigns to corporate contributions, Lindner's American Financial Group was able to give 83 times that amount, $400,000 ... to American Crossroads, a group that former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove helped create to aid GOP candidates. In mid-August, American Crossroads launched a statewide TV ad backing Portman's Senate candidacy.

In this case, a newspaper exposed the corporate spending. But that disclosure to the voters is the exception, not the rule. DISCLOSE would change that - and that's why Senate Republicans are fighting it tooth and nail.

What happens when a principal leader in the fight for greater corporate accountability runs for higher office? He becomes the target of a tremendous and misleading assault by new corporate-backed groups that have gained new prominence in the wake of Citizens United.

As one of the first leaders to introduce a Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision Citizens United, New Hampshire Congressman and Senate candidate Paul Hodes understands the risks posed by swelling corporate power. He has also signed the Pledge to Protect America’s Democracy, which asks candidates to give Congress back the right to curtail electoral spending by corporations.

Pro-corporate organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce and the American Action Network have started to pummel Hodes with ads in order to tear down his run for the open Senate seat vacated by Sen. Judd Gregg, one of Wall Street’s champions in Congress. The Chamber of Commerce, which has pledged to spend $75 million altogether in the 2010 elections, has already committed $1 million to criticize Hodes over the airwaves. Political Correction describes the Chamber of Commerce’s anti-Hodes advertisement as “deeply dishonest” and responsible for employing grandiose and embellished allegations regarding health care reform.

The American Action Network has spent $500,000 against the Congressman, which is unsurprising since the organization is led by a mix of Wall Street moguls and their advocates. Their ads in the New Hampshire race have come under such scrutiny that even a former Republican state senator who is supporting GOP frontrunner Kelly Ayotte co-wrote an op-ed which claims that the group’s ad campaign against Hodes is filled with “gross inaccuracies” that “corrode public confidence in the political process, and are completely contrary to the national interest.”

According to Democracy 21, even though these groups are spending large sums attacking progressive champions like Paul Hodes, they have not disclosed their donors to the FEC. Kenneth Doyle of the good-government group writes that the Chamber “provided no information in their FEC reports about where they get the millions of dollars used to pay for their political advertising.” Like the Chamber, the American Action Network “provided no information about any donors supporting the group’s campaign efforts.” Consequently, New Hampshire voters may never know which corporations or individuals are behind the enormous endeavor to vilify Paul Hodes and his effort to rein in corporate clout in government and abuses on Wall Street.

Last month, we started asking candidates for Congress to sign a pledge to support a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, and stop unlimited corporate spending in elections.

Last night, a federal jury in Chicago convicted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich on just one of 24 counts of political corruption. On the rest of the counts, the jury was hopelessly deadlocked.

Scott Turow, the bestselling novelist who started his career as a US Attorney prosecuting political corruption cases in Chicago, writes in the New York Times that whatever the fuzziness of fact in the Blagojevich case, what is even fuzzier is the way our legal system deals with political corruption. The influence of big money is everywhere in our political process—and the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United opened the door for less showy, but equally problematic, versions of the corruption that Blagojevich is accused of.

Indeed, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court decided that such organizations could spend as much as they wished at any time, assuming there was no direct coordination with the candidate. In doing so, the court overturned its own precedents and refused to distinguish the free speech rights of corporations and unions in any way from those of actual people.

The problem with this logic is that corporations have a legal duty not to spend money unless it is likely to improve profits. Unions, too, are expected to make only contributions that will benefit members. As a result, no idealistic patina of concern about good government or values-driven issues can burnish these payments.

The future of other campaign finance restrictions looks bleak. Thirty-four years ago, when the Supreme Court first declared in Buckley v. Valeo that the First Amendment protected election spending, it nonetheless approved contribution limits “to prevent ... the appearance of corruption.” In Citizens United, the Roberts Court gave short shrift to any concern about appearances. Limits on direct contributions to candidates appear likely to be the next campaign safeguard to fall.

In any case, the bevy of ways in which donors can get around current spending laws, combined with the Supreme Court’s elastic approach to the First Amendment, have left our campaign finance system as little more than a form of legalized influence-buying. Only those as naive as Wanda Brandstetter or as crass and ham-handed as Rod Blagojevich find themselves subject to prosecution, while others wise enough to say less out loud find snug protection in the First Amendment, no matter how bald their desire to influence government actions.

We see daily examples of this sort of dynamic happening in elections—take the Florida governor’s race--where any causal relationships between campaign cash and policy decisions can never be fully sorted out. It’s a dangerous thing for democracy…and one, as Turow points out, we aren’t going to fix without a Constitutional amendment.

Since Citizens United, as we’ve noted, corporations have been taking advantage of their permission slip to spend unlimited amounts on elections. Now Bill de Blasio, the public advocate for the City of New York, is making it easier to track which corporations are getting involved in politics.

This week, de Blasio launched a website that breaks major corporations into three categories: those that have pledged to stay out of politics, those that have not pledged to stay out of politics, and those prepared (like Target) to spend money in politics. He also makes it easy for web surfers to contact corporations and encourage them not to spend on elections.

De Blasio’s public spirited website is a great tool, but citizens shouldn’t be expected to spend every election monitoring corporate machinations. Ultimately, we need a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United. That’s why we’re asking all federal elected officials and candidates to sign our pledge to support an amendment. Has your representative signed the pledge?

Last month, we commissioned a poll asking people across the country what they thought of corporate influence in elections and the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United to expand that influence. The results were staggering.

A whopping 85% of voters surveyed said they thought corporations already have too much influence in our political system. 95 % agreed that “Corporations spend money on politics mainly to buy influence in government and elect people who are favorable to their financial interests.” 77% supported a constitutional amendment to allow Congress to limit the amount corporations can spend on elections, and 74% said they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who shared that view.

Yesterday, MoveOn.org released the results [PDF] of a new poll on corporate money in politics, and guess what?

The MoveOn poll found:

“79% of voters polled, including 72% of Republicans and 75% of Independents, believe that it’s important that a candidate commit to reducing the influence of corporations over elections”

“Almost two out of three voters (60%) disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case. Sixty-seven percent of those would be more likely to support a candidate who backs a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision.”

“Seventy-seven percent of voters overall (including 70% of Republicans Independents), view corporate election spending as an attempt to bribe politicians rather than an expression of free speech that should not be limited.”

No matter how you cut the numbers, the pattern is clear. Americans want voters, not corporate money, to own our democracy.

Senator Cornyn’s sound bite today: “A judge who presumes to be a lawmaker becomes a lawbreaker.” That is, a Justice who decides based on a desired policy outcome rather than a correct interpretation of the Constitution is a “judicial activist” and has no right to serve on the Supreme Court.

It’s always amazing to hear an ultra conservative like Senator Cornyn complain about judges legislating from the bench. Does he think that the conservative block of the Roberts Court, which overturned a century of settled law in the Citizens United case to achieve their desired pro-corporate policy result, is made up of lawbreakers?

Senator Cornyn also emphasized that, if we disagree with a law or a Supreme Court decision, we have the right to work towards a constitutional amendment. We couldn’t agree with him more. That’s why we’re fighting for a constitutional amendment to correct Citizens United and once again limit corporate money in our elections.

Republicans succeeded today in blocking Senate consideration of the DISCLOSE Act, a modest first attempt to start reigning in the money-in-politics free-for-all the Supreme Court set loose in January’s Citizens United decision.

The successful filibuster of DISCLOSE is frustrating, but it makes one thing very clear: the only way for voters to fully take back our democracy is to pass a Constitutional Amendment undoing the damage of Citizens United.

After the Senate’s vote on DISCLOSE, Sen. Max Baucus introduced a resolution calling for just such an amendment:

The impact of Citizens United goes well beyond merely changing campaign finance law. This decision will impact the ability of Congress, as well as State and local legislatures, to pass laws designed to protect its constituents—individual Americans—when such legislation comes under fierce objection by large corporations. Corporations are now free to spend millions targeting individual lawmakers. Lawmakers’ ability to pass laws such as consumer safety or investor protection now faces even greater challenges when such laws merely threaten the corporate bottom line.

Congress and the American people must respond swiftly and firmly. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United has severely altered Congress’s ability to limit corporate spending in our electoral process.

The amendment simply returns the power of regulating election spending to Congress and the states. Here it is in its entirety:

Section 1. Congress shall have the power to regulate the contribution of funds by corporations and labor organizations to a candidate for election to, or for nomination for election to, a Federal office, and the power to regulate the expenditure of funds by corporations and labor organizations made in support of, or opposition to, such candidates.

Section 2. A State shall have the power to regulate the contribution of funds by corporations and labor organizations to a candidate for election to, or for nomination for election to, public office in the State, and the power to regulate the expenditure of funds by corporations and labor organizations made in support of, or opposition to, such candidates.

Section 3. Nothing contained in this Amendment shall be construed to allow Congress or a State to make any law abridging the freedom of the press.”

We’ve asked all federal elected officials and candidates to sign on to a pledge to support a Constitutional Amendment to reverse Citizens United. Find out more at www.pledgefordemocracy.org.

When we commissioned a poll to gauge what Americans thought about the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, we expected to find strong opposition to the idea of unlimited corporate influence in elections. But even we were stunned by how strong that opposition was. 85% of those surveyed disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to give corporations unlimited power to spend in elections, and 74% supported a Constitutional Amendment to reverse it.

Today, in a packed Netroots Nation panel organized by People For, activists and elected officials gave their loud and clear endorsement of a Constitutional Amendment to undo Citizens United and return elections to voters.

The audience responded with a standing ovation when panelist Rep. Donna Edwards declared her support for an amendment saying, “Let’s not let anything undo our power over our elections.”

Edwards spoke about the pressure members of Congress face from the health care and energy lobbies, and other powerful interests. “We cannot afford in this country to have elected officials afraid to stand up to that,” she said.

Corporate interests, Edwards said, “are not just trying to influence the process, they want to own the process.”

In Congress, Rep. Alan Grayson added, a corporate lobbyist “can walk into your and office, say ‘I have $5 million, and I can spend it for you or against you.’…this really is a threat to our democracy.”

All of the panelists, including Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman, Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy, and People For’s Marge Baker, agreed that passing a Constitutional Amendment wouldn’t be easy, but is necessary.

Baker called the Citizens United decision “radical, dangerous, and pernicious,” and emphasized the opportunity it creates for progressives to reclaim the debate over the courts as we work to reverse it.

“Citizens United is one of the all time worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of the United States,” Weissman said, “It’s certain that it’s going to be overturned. The question is, are we going to overturn it in the next 4-5 years, or wait 50 years.”

Graves added that Americans have managed to amend the Constitution throughout our history. “They did it with the Pony Express,” she said, “and we have Web 2.0”

One of the greatest of many great parts about the end of George W. Bush’s presidency a year and a half ago was, I thought, that we wouldn’t have to spend our lives worrying about what Karl Rove was up to. How wrong I was.

A new political operation conceived by Republican operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie formed a spinoff group last month that - thanks in part to its ability to promise donors anonymity - has brought in more money in its first month than the parent organization has raised since it started in March.

The new group, called American Crossroads GPS, has been telling donors their contributions would be used to dig up dirt on Congressional Democrats’ “expense account abuses” and to frame the BP oil spill as “Obama’s Katrina.”

… A veteran GOP operative familiar with the group’s fundraising activities said the spin-off was formed largely because donors were reluctant to see their names publicly associated with giving to a 527 group, least of all one associated with Rove, who Democrats still revile for his role in running former President George W. Bush’s political operation.

This kind of shadowy politicking is exactly why we so urgently need measures like the DISCLOSE Act, which would require those who are attempting to influence elections through conduits such as Rove’s group to reveal their contributions. Even more importantly, we need a constitutional amendment to ensure the continuing ability of Congress and the states to regulate in this nefarious arena That’s why we’ve joined with Public Citizen in a campaign to get all candidates for federal office to pledge to work towards amending the constitution.

Today, People For the American Way and Public Citizen launched a new campaign to get the ball rolling on a Constitutional Amendment to kick corporate money out of elections.

In January, the Supreme Court overturned a policy that was more than a century-old to allow corporations to spend millions of dollars from their treasuries to influence elections. To get to that decision, in the case of Citizens United v. FEC, the Court determined that corporations have the same free speech rights as individuals.

This reasoning, and the conclusion it led to, have been soundly rejected by Americans across the political spectrum. A poll we commissioned last month found that 85% of Americans disagree with the Court’s conclusion that the First Amendment allows corporations to spend whatever they like on elections, and 77% wanted to amend the Constitution to undo it.

What’s more, 74%--including majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents-- said they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who pledged to work for a Constitutional Amendment to undo Citizens United.

We saw this as a clear call to action. So we joined up with Public Citizen to create www.PledgeForDemocracy.org and start making a Constitutional Amendment a reality.

Here’s how it works. We’ve written up a pledge for federal candidates to sign, committing them to work towards a Constitutional Amendment to return our democracy to voters. It reads:

The Supreme Court's flawed decision allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts to influence election outcomes endangers our democracy and threatens to drown out the voices of individual citizens. I pledge to protect America from unlimited corporate spending on our elections by supporting a Constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's decision giving corporations the same First Amendment rights as people.

If you support a Constitutional Amendment, contact your representatives and candidates in your area and urge them to sign the pledge. Then get back to us and let us know what they said. We’ll keep track of contacts to candidates and officials, and publicize which candidates sign the pledge and which refuse to sign it.

We know that elections belong to voters…it’s time for elected officials to show they agree.

As our recent poll shows, 92% of Americans agree that Congress needs to take action to right the wrongs of the Citizens United decision. One way to start would be to pass a bill like the DISCLOSE Act to force big corporations to publicly reveal the money they spend to influence elections. Proponents of such legislation may worry that the corporate-leaning Supreme Court will overturn the bill after it’s passed – but they shouldn’t worry too much. With the exception of Justice Thomas, none of the Supreme Court Justices have expressed hostility to disclosure requirements - in fact, the most well known conservative Justice on the Court may even be an advocate. As SCOTUSblog pointed out in May, Justice Scalia has been a vocal supporter of transparency in democracy:

Justice Scalia [has] expressed the strong view that disclosure requirements do not implicate significant First Amendment concerns. To the concern that disclosure could deter expression, Justice Scalia responded, “[T]he fact is that running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage.”

This may be one of the only instances in which Justice Scalia is in line with the majority of Americans. As our recent poll shows, 89% of Americans support the transparency legislation like the DISCLOSE Act, although many (62%) believe such legislation wouldn’t go far enough to correct the outrageous Citizens United decision.

The American people are right again: just forcing corporations to disclose their political activities can’t fix Citizens United’s dangerous assertion that the 1st amendment guarantees unlimited corporate spending on elections, and conservative Justices – Scalia included – are likely to overturn any legislation that would. That’s why 77% of Americans believe that we need a constitutional amendment to insure that our democratic system isn’t drowned in corporate money. And 74 % say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate for Congress who pledged to support a Constitutional Amendment limiting corporate spending on elections.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court has weighed in more on the value of political disclosure in today's decision in Doe v. Reed. We'll post more on that later this morning.

People For released a new poll today that contains some pretty stunning numbers showing the extent to which Americans are fed up with corporate money and politics… and ready to amend the Constitution to fix it.

Here are some of the findings:

85% of voters say that corporations have too much influence over the political system today while 93% say that average citizens have too little influence.

95% agree that “Corporations spend money on politics mainly to buy influence in government and elect people who are favorable to their financial interests.” (74% strongly agree)

85% disagree that “Corporations should be able to spend as much as they want to influence the outcome of elections because the Constitution protects freedom of speech.” (63% strongly disagree)

93% agree that “There should be clear limits on how much money corporations can spend to influence the outcome of an election.” (74% strongly agree)

77% think Congress should support an amendment to limit the amount U.S. corporations can spend to influence elections.

74% say that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate for Congress who pledged to support a Constitutional Amendment limiting corporate spending in elections.

The last point—that 74% of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents would be more likely to vote for a candidate for Congress who pledged to support a Constitutional Amendment is striking. Passing a Constitutional Amendment requires overwhelming support from citizens across the country and across the political spectrum—but it also requires their being willing to take action. This poll shows that a broad majority is ready for both.

A few weeks ago, former Supreme Court Justice David Souter delivered a call to arms against the misguided theory of “constitutional originalism” that has dominated recent debates on the Supreme Court. “The Constitution is no simple contract,” Souter said, “Not because it uses a certain amount of open-ended language that a contract draftsman would try to avoid, but because its language grants and guarantees many good things, and good things that compete with each other and can never all be realized, all together, all at once.”

Souter’s argument has started a robust and refreshing conversation about keeping faith with the Constitution …. and debunking the notion of justices as constitutional umpires who have to simply stand at the plate and call objective balls and strikes.

Constitutional law professor Alain L. Sanders weighed in today with an interesting take on what a literal adherence to the Constitution as originally written —sure to be invoked in the upcoming hearings on Elena Kagan’s nomination— would mean:

The political oratory will be enticing to many, and sound astute, learned and even well-grounded. But much of it will be misleading, wrong-headed, and unsupported by logic, history, or the principles of the Constitution. A simple examination of the Senate confirmation proceedings themselves illuminates the fallacies of the conservative assault.

Sitting on the Senate Judiciary panel will be California's Dianne Feinstein and Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar. To any and all true-blue strict constructionists, the presence of these two women legislators ought immediately to sound the alarm of unconstitutionality and invalidate the entire confirmation process. The Constitution states clearly, directly and consistently throughout its many provisions that federal officials are to be men.

Sanders’ argument brought to mind some other great riffs on Souter’s speech that we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks. These articles are all worth a read:

The Constitutional Accountability Center’s Doug Kendall and UVA professor Jim Ryan argued that adherence to the full text and history of the Constitution – including all of its amendments - is something that progressives can and should embrace:

We live in an era thick with conservative nostalgia for the "original" Constitution and the ideas of our founding, even when those ideas have been repudiated or modified by subsequent constitutional amendments. Kagan would be doing the entire nation as well as the Constitution itself a service if she would use the confirmation process to express and explain her commitment to follow the Constitution—all of it. If Kagan does talk about the text and history of the Constitution, as well as the role of the court, it could go a long way toward recalibrating the current national debate on the judiciary and the Constitution.

So, as we look forward toward Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings, the question isn't whether she will use the opportunity of her hearings to defend living constitutionalism or to debunk originalism. That is probably too freighted a discussion, and one that no progressive can possibly win in this day and age. The question I would ask is why it's so fashionable for nominees to suggest that the hard work of judging is simple; that the Constitution is no more complicated than the instructions for assembling an Ikea end table; and that the reason they are perfectly qualified for the job is that, well, they can read. What does it say about the court as an institution that everyone who goes through the interview process must downplay the difficulty of the job?

And Adam Serwer of the American Prospect, responding to Lithwick, calls originalism out as “a great hustle”:

Lithwick notes that the theory of orginalism assumes a "nonexistent universe in which all cases are easy and all the constitutional directives are perfectly clear." But to the originalists, it is always perfectly clear: The answer is whatever they want it to be, all other conclusions are inherently illegitimate. That's what makes originalism such a great hustle -- its arbitraryness is masked by nigh-bulletproof rhetorical argument -- that its adherents are simply "applying the law as written." In order to attack their reasoning, you first have to dismantle the idea that there are no inherent tensions within the Constitution that need to be resolved in order to reach a clear ruling. In a way, originalists are a bit like religious fundamentalists who insist on following their religious texts literally but in practice only select those that fit their prevailing cultural sympathies, dismissing others as heretics and unbelievers.

We’re hoping that the weeks since Souter’s commencement address are just the beginning of a new discussion about the Constitution and the importance of the Supreme Court in all of our lives - a discussion that should be at the center of the debate on Kagan’s confirmation.

Republicans say they’re plotting to use any Supreme Court nomination battle to their advantage in November.

Butpollsshow that the issue cuts strongly the other way—the American public is overwhelmingly concerned about the current Court’s pro-corporate sympathies and its failure to fully appreciate how the law affects individual Americans.

Within hours of President Obama’s announcement that he would nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias seized on that message in an email to supporters. Here’s a screenshot:

Giannoulias isn’t the first candidate to appeal to the public’s discomfort with the Court’s pro-corporate bent. Last month, now-Rep. Ted Deutch decisively won a special election in Florida, after running on a platform that included a Constitutional Amendment to reverse Citizens United v. FEC.

Citizens United, Ledbetter, and Exxon v. Baker have brought home the impact that the Court’s corporate leanings can have on all Americans. We’re expecting to see a lot more office-seekers raising these issues as November approaches.

This morning, Senate Democrats announced a sweeping legislative remedy to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened up elections to unlimited corporate spending. The DISCLOSE Act would require the disclosure of corporate money spent on influencing elections, and it would prevent foreign companies, government contractors, and bail-out recipients from spending money in American elections. People For’s President, Michael Keegan, weighed in:

Only a constitutional amendment or new ruling can truly 'fix' Citizens United, but the DISCLOSE Act goes far in mitigating its corrosive effect on our democracy. Americans want government by the people, not corporations. But as long as corporations have the ability to pour money into elections, Americans have the right to know how that money is being spent.

The Supreme Court enabled companies to spend money on elections while hiding behind front groups, PR firms, and advocacy groups -- without any disclosure whatsoever. It also opened American elections to spending by foreign corporations, government contractors, and companies that receive billions in government bailouts. The DISCLOSE Act would close these outrageous loopholes.

Not surprisingly, the main opposition to the legislation so far has come from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has plans to spend $50 million on this fall’s elections.

The Chamber may be up for a tough fight. A PFAW poll in February found that 78% of those surveyed believe corporations should be limited in how much they spend to influence elections; 70% though corporations already had too much influence in the process. Other polls have found similar levels of displeasure—across the political spectrum—with Citizens United and the increasing role of corporate money in politics.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) invoked Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’s name in a Senate floor speech Tuesday warning Obama not to nominate someone who would be an automatic vote against corporate interests. He made it clear such a nomination could provoke a GOP filibuster.

“The big corporation might have the right law and facts in a particular case,” said Kyl, who noted that Roberts in his own confirmation hearing said that in a dispute between a “big guy and little guy” he would vote for whoever had the law behind him.

“You don’t go on to the bench [saying], ‘I’m always going to be against the big guy,’ ” said Kyl.

Kyl’s straw man argument not only misconstrues Obama’s words, but shows how out of touch his party has become with the American people. A People For poll in February found that a full 78% of Americans—from across the political spectrum— believe that corporations should be limited in how much they can spend to influence elections, with 70% believing that corporations already have too much influence. And asked whether President Obama should nominate a Supreme Court justice who supports limiting corporate spending in elections, 69% said yes.

And just this week, a candidate running on a platform that included a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United won a resounding victory in a congressional special election in Florida.

Given that kind of evidence, Senator Kyl might want to rethink his decision to make himself a champion of corporate interests over the rights of ordinary Americans.

In a hearing today entitled "We the People? Corporate Spending in American Elections after Citizens United,” the Senate Judiciary Committee discussed the impact of the Citizens United v. FEC and possible steps to repair the damage. In addition to touching on legislative fixes, the question of a Constitutional Amendment came up, posed by Senator Benjamin Cardin on Maryland.

Don't forget to sign our petition, calling for a Constitutional Amendment to restore government by the people.

UPDATE: YouTube has been having some problems with embedded videos. If you have trouble playing it, try double clicking the video to open it in YouTube in a new window.

Ultimately, we must cut through the underbrush and go directly to the heart of the problem, and that is why I am proposing this constitutional amendment: because constitutional questions need constitutional answers.

People for the American Way applauds Senators Dodd and Udall, Senator John Kerry, and House members like Donna Edwards, John Conyers, and Leonard Boswell, for pushing constitutional amendments. We believe that this is the only complete remedy for the grave threat posed to our democracy by the Roberts Court and its equation of corporations with individuals – a perversion of the First Amendment.

While legislation is a crucial part of the effort to repair this decision, it should be only a part of our response. Constitutional amendments are warranted in only the most extreme circumstances. This is one of them.

You can join People For the American Way’s call for a constitutional amendment by signing our petition at http://www.pfaw.org/Amend.

We face two challenges: first, to mediate the impact of the Court's decision and stop the bleeding through immediate countermeasures and, second, to think boldly about the best way to free our democracy from the dominance of big money.

Mr. Chairman, the reform ideas already circulating are promising - mandating shareholder approval of spending, prohibiting spending by domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations and government contractors, giving candidates primetime access to the public airwaves at the lowest rates.

We must do those things quickly. But we may also need to think bigger. I think we need a constitutional amendment to make it clear once and for all that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals.